Thursday, August 07, 2008

Lawd, a bitch should have put down money because my ass saw this one coming…

Shall we?

A bitch is deeply concerned that one of the sacred tenants of bitchitude (though shall not trifle) is going to be violated during the Democratic National Convention this month. Specifically, I’m concerned by the news that supporters of Senator Clinton plan to get their catharsis on by having her name put forth on the convention floor.Oh, I’m not against floor battles or convention-based drama. This work, hard working American owes more than I can repay to a certain Mississippi delegation that spoke truth to power at the 1964 Democratic Convention. But it is the legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) that a bitch is thinking about now that news has broken…hard…that supporters of Senator Clinton need some sort of cleansing process during the Democratic National Convention.

Call me old school, but when this bitch protests it ain’t about working through my feelings or coming to terms with a political loss. I’m about action and change or I may as well stay home with a bucket of chicken and vodka followed by cran. My feminist sensibilities are beyond offended by the notion that women supporters need to yell and scream before they can come together…right now (sing it like the Beatles, baby!)…in support of Senator Obama.

Have y’all lost your damn minds?

My Gawd, I can’t imagine sitting at that fundraiser…okay, let’s keep it real – there’s no way in hell this bitch could have afforded the price of admission to that big bank shit and even if I could I’ve got better things to do with money.

Cough.

But anyhoo, if by some strange set of events I were at a fundraiser where a candidate I supported told me that she understood my need to vent and get it out of my system in response to what I hope was a serious inquiry and not just the first step in a round of symbolic shit disturbing for no motherfucking reason other than to disturb shit protests, this bitch would take back my rubber check and walk the fuck out.

What the fuck?

You either seriously want Senator Clinton to be considered for nomination or you just want to let the party know…again…that you’re pissed off.

And I’m sorry, but something offends me about any candidate telling a bunch of women backers that she hopes they’ll get their chance to fuss.

Let's be a little careful with language here, my favorite ABB. Some nutbars who also happen to "support" Clinton are in charge of this asshattery, and the MSM, which is going to cover the fuck out of their charades at the expense of any kind of meaningful political analysis (as usual) is egging them on.

But Clinton herself, a class act for the most part, is doing no such thing, nor is she encouraging it. And I, as one of her supporters, don't want to be grouped with the nutbars any more than I want to be grouped with Joe Lieberman just because he and I allegedly emanate from the same tribe.

Of course the media has done a poor job of presenting the full facts of why a significant number of us are not jumping on the DNC's unity bandwagon. It's much more titillating to present our reasonable protest as mere venting. But it's more than that. It's about the questionable way the caucuses were run, the lack of experience of the presumptive nominee--Senator Clinton never would have gotten that far, if her resume was as thin as Senator Obama's--and the dismissive way the DNC has addressed voters who are standing up for our principles and demanding that our voices be heard. This is, still, a democracy. Rather, we thought it was. I guess the DNC would prefer we pretend it wasn't, toss our principles aside, and silently toe the line.

I guess the media would like to pretend it's a racial thing, too. But the truth is not all of us are white. I'm not.

The protest in Denver isn't an act of catharsis before jumping in line behind Senator Obama. It is a protest against a process that was conducted unfairly (perhaps illegally, in some cases) and against a candidate we have no intention of supporting.

More informed opinions than what the mainstream media is presenting can be found here:

What was "questionable" about the caucuses, other than that Barack Obama and his team knew that they counted and knew how to get delegates from them, while the "experienced" Clinton team chose to ignore them and downplay them, while trumpeting the need to "count all the votes" in states that all the candidates knew ahead of time wouldn't count, per DNC rules? (Hillary's message of "fairness" and empowerment: I win if I'm the only name on the ballot!)

You're right: Hillary Clinton's political resume isn't "as thin" as Barack Obama's: it's thinner. He's been in elected office since 1996, a whole four years before Mrs. Clinton decided to move to New York and use her husband's connections to jump-start her career in electoral politics. (Nobody voted for her to be First Lady of Arkansas or the U.S., and "wife" usually isn't considered a line item on a resume.)

Do you think, absent her marriage to a former president, that a union-busting corporate attorney from Arkansas who had a handful of board memberships (including Wal-Mart) under her belt could have up and moved to New York and won election to the U.S. Senate mere months later?

But if experience is what you're most concerned about, I assume that you supported Biden, Richardson, Kucinich, or Dodd ahead of Hillary. They all have much thicker resumes, after all. Not really pertinent, in any event, since there is no "experience" requirement for the presidency in the U.S. Constitution. And the president with arguably the most experience prior to his election (James Buchanan) is widely seen as one of the greatest presidential disasters in the nation's history, so experience isn't much to go on. (For which Bill Clinton should be grateful -- George H.W. Bush had a lot more of it than Bill, of course.)

And not to pick nits, but this isn't a democracy. It's a republic.

Barack Obama won the nomination fair and square under the existing DNC rules (and they are the organization that gets to make the rules). You don't like the party rules, get busy trying to change them for the next cycle. But don't diminish Obama's achievement because he and his team outsmarted and outworked the Clinton machine, even when Hillary was being hailed in the media as the presumptive nominee for a full year before the first caucus and had access to some of the deepest donor pockets around.

Just for the record, Lotus, the caucuses were run the way the caucuses have always been run. Sen. Clinton chose to ignore them thinking she would sweep Super Tuesday. It was a huge tactical error on her part that lost her the nomination most likely. Someone with her savvy should really have known better.

I am all for her having a large and visible role at the convention. She worked her ass off, earned a hell of a lot of votes, and she deserves that respect. She, however, has enough grace and class and pragmatism to not allow any foolishness on the floor. I hope the very vocal minority of her supporters and her crazy-ass husband behave in a similar manner.